In certain communications network environments, a control plane engine, such as an XR controller node, controls a set of forwarding engines, such as Virtual Provider Edge Forwarders (“VPEF”) nodes, running on compute servers. The forwarding engines are connected to themselves as well as to other networks using Layer 2/Internet Protocol (“L2/IP”) or Multi-Protocol Label Switching (“MPLS”) fabric. Segment routing provides the ability to set up MPLS Label Switched Paths (“LSPs”) without the need to deploy RSVP-TE or LDP signaling protocols and hence leads to simpler network operation, and better scalability and agility in setting up large numbers of LSPs. It is anticipated that Segment Routed Label Switched Paths (“SR LSPs”) will become a preferred data transport method in NFV network architectures.
Additionally, service providers (“SPs”) have been deploying RSVP signaled traffic engineering LSPs for many years to carry services such as L3VPN with quality of service (“QoS”) guarantees and reliability using mechanisms like Fast ReRoute (“FRR”) and path protection. Network operators offering cloud, web-server farm, and other services are also considering MPLS-TE solutions for transferring data among data centers (“DCs”).